


Moveable Parts

by romickey



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Trans, Gen, Other, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-26 17:56:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18183866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romickey/pseuds/romickey
Summary: trans neil au, pre-canon





	Moveable Parts

When Neil finally comes out to Mary, she thinks about it for a few minutes, a few endless minutes, then says, “that could work in our favor.” That response has never settled right with Neil. When he’s recognized time and time again, regardless of the changes to his face and body, he flinches at the way his mother looks at him, and he wonders if she regrets all the effort spent. She never had the time to be an understanding mother, Neil always tells himself.

*

They bluff medical documents and steal prescription hormones, but Neil is never sure if he’ll have enough to last until they settle in the next safe place, and how long it will take to forge papers there. He squeezes the last doses smaller and smaller until they’re gone too soon. It’s like that, rationing until the drought, over and over again, and he learns to live without the security of his own body being his.

*

The first move after he’s able to pass is such a liberating experience, despite the threat that forces them out. He finally gets to choose his name and his story and the kind of person he is, the kind of boy he is. But then they move again, and again, and it gets old. He goes through names and hair colors and clothes until not only does he feel nothing like his childhood self, he no longer knows who he is at all. He chose his favorite name first, then had to give that up, took the next one on the list and then had to ditch that, and so on, until he’s more lost than ever. He thought transition would help him feel some sense of stability, some sense of identity, but largely that is wasted, because Nathaniel Wesninski is a lie and what he truly is is a collection of movable parts, and nothing more.

*

As he slowly metamorphosizes, he waits patiently for the day when he will recognize his own face, his true face. He wonders if he will still look like his mother. He wasn’t prepared for looking in the mirror and seeing his father. He thinks he sees Mary jump at his voice sometimes, scowl at the way he takes up space the way his father did. So he learns to cover up, cover up his eyes and his hair and his words and his masculinity. He tries to keep both of them safe from the nightmares.

* 

Mary is keen on the idea of top surgery, not favoring the idea of him getting caught unawares and discovered. They go through a rather sketchy line of underground contacts and have it arranged, and there isn’t enough time to properly heal as they’re on the run within the month. But Neil has recovered from worse. These scars are just two to add to many, the only ones chosen, the only ones good. 

*

He thought Mary was cruel about the “staying away from boys” message, drilling into him all the ways men are fucked up and will always deep down want to hurt you, but she has even more to say about resisting the temptation of women, now that he’s a man and all. She thinks she’s protecting him from what he wants, but Neil doesn’t know what he wants, or if he wants anything at all. If she just asked, if she ever took the time to just sit down and talk about it, maybe he could’ve explained that to her.

*

The bottom line is that identity had never been a thing Neil had felt he was entitled to. It had always been a commodity to trade for survival, and he had made that trade so many times now that he was numb to it. Palmetto state is a haven in so many ways, with their stalled locker rooms and no questions asked. But after all the fights have been fought and the dead are not coming back, after he gets everything he could have ever wanted and so much more, after he signs on the dotted line as “Neil Josten,” a person that exists and is real, he is finally allowed to look at the broken pieces of his life and ask, “what makes me feel like me?” He’s allowed to start the journey of unraveling everything he’s ever been told about who he is and everything he’s ever told himself he was in order to survive. He can start to repair the damage, build his own life and his own identity, so that someday he might finally be able to see his life laid out and say “I understand now.” He’s allowed to grieve, and he’s allowed to grow.

**Author's Note:**

> neil's story parallels a trans narrative so nicely; I wrote this all one night in a fever of inspiration and it turned out better than I intended, so I figured i could put it here


End file.
